The Altar
by Dr. Jekyl
Summary: Later, Liara will remember these days, filled with strangeness and wonder, and weep for the promise they'd held. Post control-ending ficlet.


For a prompt asking for for post-Control-ending FemShep/Liara.

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**The Altar**

It starts off so bizarrely that it is hard for Liara to believe it, at first, let alone come to terms. Later, she will remember these days, filled with strangeness and wonder, and weep for the promise they'd held.

Shepard is gone... but not. Shepard is a Reaper... but not. Shepard is still the woman she loves... but not. That Shepard still loves her, too, is somehow the hardest thing of all to bear. They are changed beyond all recognition now, the pair of them, and nothing will ever be the same.

Still, she adapts. She learns. She loves. It is what she does. Who she is. She helps the others around her to adapt, too, to this new universe where her Shepard is _The_Shepard, the benevolent goddess who wears the face of their once mortal enemy. She is their sword and shield and hammer, their guiding light and watchful eye. Under Her careful direction, with Her gentle guidance and incalculable strength, the galaxy rebuilds, better, stronger than before. There is peace. Prosperity. And Liara is Her priestess throughout. Liara, who loves, helps others to come to love Her too.

Asari mythology is full of stories of love between goddesses and mortals. Some end badly. Some do not. But they all share a common theme, a single thread that binds them together, if only you know where to look: such romances do not last. Even a lifespan of a thousand years is but the blink of an eye to a goddess, the true motives of the divine impossible for mortals to comprehend.

The day comes, many hundreds of years later, when simple guidance is no longer enough. Mortals are flawed, fallible, short-sighted creatures; they often do not understand what is truly best for themselves. A gentle correction is needed, made, to prevent suffering, to show the way forward. Would you not snatch a child's hand back from the fire, lest she burn herself black? Clear a path for her through the bramble thicket, if only you could?

And Liara, who loves, understands, and trusts Her to do what is right. She understands the second time, too, and the third and the fourth. But with the fifth...

With the fifth, she quietly prepares for war.

The Shepard, who loves, but loves her best of all, does not understand her rebellion. It must seem a queer thing indeed to one such as She, a betrayal that is impossible to comprehend because it is unimaginable. Liara, who understands. Liara, who trusts. Liara who loves, and always has.

Time and again, Liara strikes out, away from the flock, and time and again The Shepard carefully herds her back, punishes the wolves that that so clearly led her astray. She, of all beings, is to be protected, cherished, loved. But, even for a goddess such as She, there is an end to patience, the knowledge that love needs must have limits. And so it comes to pass that Liara is brought before Her for the final time, bloodied, older than her years but unbowed, to face the choice offered to all those given to childish defiance: comply or be undone.

It is there that Liara, who loves, at last speaks the words, the final words, the ones that snatch away the spark of the divine and cast it down from the heavens, to be consumed in the red fires below:

"Why don't you just turn the whole galaxy into Reapers, Shepard?"

Later, when the last of The Shepard is gone, dead, dust, ashes, Liara remembers those early days, filled with strangeness and wonder, and weeps for the promise they'd held. Liara, who understood. Liara, who'd trusted. Liara, who loves, and always will.

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_A/N: It seems that, for a lot of people, the Control ending brought to mind the _God-Emperor of Dune_. I was rather more minded of _Superman: Red Son_, and the idea that Shepard's best qualities, like the Superman in that story, would be the ones that ultimately doomed her. This is something of a homage to that Elseworld._


End file.
